FactCheck Q&A: Should Jeremy Hunt go?
May 31, 2012 7:05 pm No Comments
Jeremy Hunt appears to have survived his brush with the Leveson inquiry.
The culture secretary went into the hearing amid widespread doubts over his ministerial future. But he emerged with the backing of the prime minister.
Close links between Mr Hunt’s special adviser Adam Smith and Fred Michel, a lobbyist for Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, led to Mr Smith’s departure from the Department of Culture, Media and Sport earlier this month.
Mr Hunt insists he kept the Murdochs at arm’s length after responsibility for authorising News Corp’s bid to but out the satellite broadcaster BSkyB passed to him from Vince Cable in December 2010.
But only a few hours before he inherited the decision-making powers Mr Hunt was in close contact with James Murdoch. He dodged a bullet today, but has Jeremy Hunt really cleared his name?
Did he break the ministerial code?
Labour say the culture secretary has broken the code of conduct for cabinet ministers in three ways.
They say Mr Hunt misled parliament in March 2011 when he insisted he had published “all the documents relating to…all the exchanges between my department and News Corp”, despite not coming clean about emails and texts until later.
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